Rare Books @ NLS

We recently acquired a Russian version of “The Battle of Lora”, one of James MacPherson’s Ossianic poems. It was published exactly 200 years ago, in 1813, at the Navy Press in St Petersburg.

MacPherson published his Fingal, and ancient poem in 1762 (Oss.4). The Battle of Lora is one of the epic poems in this collection. A first translation of Fingal into Russian, based mainly on the 1765 French translation by Letourneur, appeared in 1792. It stimulated a huge interest in folk poetry in Russia, and even Pushkin wrote a verse translation of it. In 1813, the editor and translator Valerian Nikolaevich Olin (1788-c. 1840) published this free translation into Russian verse, and followed this in 1823 and 1824 with another two verse adaptations. Olin defended the authenticity of Ossian: he believed that Ossianic poetry was the northern European equivalent of Classical Greek and Roman poetry.

The book was formerly in the Russian Imperial Library at Tsarskoye Selo, a country estate to the south of St Petersburg which was owned by the Russian royal family. It served as a summer residence of the tsars and a place for official receptions. After the October Revolution of 1917, the contens of the Imperial Library were dispersed.

Find out more about James MacPherson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections).

We have reached the first milestone in digitising all our out-of-copyright books in Gaelic: the first 50 are now freely accessible and can be read in full on our website about Early Gaelic Book Collections! The digitised books were published between 1631 and 1900 and cover mostly literary and religious subjects from poetry and songs to translations of John Bunyan’s works, editions of the Psalms and the Bible, catechisms and Gaelic hymns.

That sounds like a lot of religious stuff, and it is! The first Gaelic book that was not concerned with anything religious was only published in 1741. That was a Gaelic-English Dictionary (H.M.109(1)), obviously the first of its kind. You can also access this Galick and English Vocabulary online.

One of the highlights of the first batch of 50 items in Gaelic is the second ever book printed in Gaelic. It is a translation of John Calvin’s Catechism,(F.7.g.5(2)) and ours is the only known surviving copy!

It is a remarkable fact that none of the 50 books now availble online have any illustrations.

The Library has acquired a collection of individual issues of the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser newspaper from 1787 through to 1788, which probably contain the first examples of Robert Burns’s work in print in the USA! Each issue prints a poem or song by Burns to give American readers a taster of his poetry. This happenend before the first American edition Burns’s Poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect was published in July 1788.
The appearance of Burns’s work in an American newspaper, just over a year after his poems were first published in Kilmarnock shows how rapidly Burns’s fame spread in the English-speaking world. It’s also a good indicator of how close the trade and cultural ties between Scotland and the USA in the late 1780s were.

The Philadelphia story

The American edition of Burns’s Poems was the brainchild of two ex-pat Scots based in Philadelphia: Peter Stewart, a printer and bookseller, and George Hyde, a bookbinder. Copies of the Kilmarnock, or, more likely, the 1787 Edinburgh edition of Poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect must have crossed the Atlantic soon after publication. As there were no copyright laws restricting the publication of the works of British authors in the new republic, it was a relatively simple matter to print an American edition without having to worry about prosecution or payment of royalties to the author. Rather than issue a prospectus for their work, Stewart and Hyde chose the tried and tested 18th-century method of having individual poems printed in a newspaper before publishing a full edition.
The Philadelphia-printed Pennsylvania Packet was America’s first successful daily newspaper. At the time Philadephia was the financial and cultural centre of the USA, and therefore an obvious choice to showcase the poems. 25 poems were published at regular intervals in the newspaper from 24 July 1787 to 14 June 1788. The poems selected for publication which are best known today are probably “The cotter’s Saturday night” and “To a louse”.
Stewart and Hyde’s aim was to portray Burns as a sentimental, God-fearing ploughman, at one with nature and sympathetic to the American colonists who had recently freed themselves from British control. They could also count on Scottish settlers’ feelings of nostalgia for their homeland. To further promote the forthcoming edition, the newspaper also printed Henry Mackenzie’s positive review of Burns’s work, which first appeared in The Lounger in Edinburgh in December 1786 and then in The London Chronicle, which did much to publicise Burns to a wider readership in Britain.
The 1788 Philadelphia edition of Burns’s poems was followed by a New York edition printed in December of the same year. It was also published by ex-pat Scots, J. and A. Maclean, formerly of Glasgow.

The collection in the National Library

The collection of Pennsylvania Packet issues acquired by the Library contains all of the poems by Burns to have been printed in that newspaper except for one: “Scotch Drink”. It also includes two issues (7 July and 16 July 1788) containing the original publisher’s advertisement for the first American edition, and an issue ( 28 August 1787) advertising “A select collection of the most favourite Scots tunes, with variations for the piano forte or harpsichord [sic]“, composed by Alexander Reinagle.
The newspaper issues were offered to the Library by Frank Amari Jnr., a collector and dealer of early American printing and manuscripts. Mr Amari has his own particular connection to Scotland, since his mother was born and raised in Edinburgh. Two of the issues have been donated by his mother in memory of her parents, the rest were purchased from Mr Amari.

You can read more about Robert Burns in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections), and in our webpage about Burns.

Today is National Poetry Day! I’d like to celebrate this event by showcasing how a poem can act as a link between nations, in this case between Scotland and Germany.

In 1802, Walter Scott published his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (Bk.5/1.3-4), a collection of “historical and romantic ballads, collected in the southern counties of Scotland”, as the subtitle said. One of these poems, ‘O gin my love were yon red rose’, was translated by Wilhelm Grimm, one half of the brothers of fairy tale fame, into German. He published this poem both in the Scots original and on the facing page in German translation along with two other Scottish ballads in a small booklet entitled Drei altschottische Lieder (5.637(13)),  i.e. Three Old Scots songs. A copy of this small book is on show in the Grimms Treasure display.

Here is a transcript of the poem ‘O gin my love were yon red rose’, which, according to the Lay of the last minstrel, comes from Mr Herd’s manuscript:

O gin my love were yon red rose,           �
That grows upon the castle wa’,       �
And I mysell a drap of dew,                                       �
Down on that red rose I would fa’.        �
O my love’s bonny, bonny, bonny;                         �
My love’s bonny and fair to see:
Whene’er I look on her weel far’d face,      �
She looks and smiles again to me.

O gin my love were a pickle of wheat,
And growing upon yon lily lee,
And I mysell a bonny wee bird,
Awa wi’ that pickle o’ wheat I wad flee.
O my love’s bonny, &c.

O gin my love were a coffer o’gowd,
And I the keeper o’ the key,
I wad open the kist whene’er I list,
And in that coffer I wad be.
O my love’s bonny, &c.

You can read more about Walter Scott in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections).
Have a look at Edinburgh University’s Walter Scott Digital Archive for more information on the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

We recently acquired two very rare translations into Russian of Walter Scott’s epic poems The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Rokeby. Scott was probably the most popular foreign author in Russia in the 19th century. 

The Lay of the Last Minstrel was first published in 1805. The Russian translation (RB.s.2828), in prose rather than verse, appeared in 1823. The translator was Mikhail Kachenovsky (1775-1842), a professor at Moscow University and editor of the journal Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe). We only know of two other copies of this translation. One is held in Helsinki by the National Library of Finland, and one in St Petersburg at the National Library of Russia.

The first English edition of Rokeby appeared in 1813 and was soon translated for readers on the Continent.  The Russian translation (RB.s.2826-2827), by an unidentified translator, appeared in 1823. The Russian version of the poem is in prose, just like that of The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The National Library of Russia in St Petersburg holds a copy, but we have traced no other copies in western European libraries.

Find out more about Sir Walter Scott  in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

The Walter Scott Digital Archive maintained by Edinburgh University Library is a treasure trove of information. Have a a look at the pages about The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Rokeby.

We’ve been fortunate recently to buy a copy of a book which appears to be the only known copy! It’s called Whiskiana, or the drunkard’s progress.  A poem. In Scottish verse (NLS shelfmark AP.1.211.06), and it was printed in Glasgow in 1812:

Whiskiana deals with the “evil of habitual intoxication”.  The author acknowledges the popular Scots poet Hector Macneill as an inspiration but remains anonymous, simply calling himself Anti-Whiskianus.

All we know about him is what he reveals about himself in the preface: he was originally from the village of Ceres in Fife. 

 The poem follows a drunkard all the way from inebriation to redemption in order to “counteract the excessive praises lavished on whisky by Burns”. I’m not sure how much Robert Burns can be blamed for excessive whisky consumption, but for Anti-Whiskianus temperance was the only solution to the problem. No half measures then!

We recently bought a collection of Scottish poems (shelfmark: RB.s.2811(1-13)) written in the late 18th century. What makes this small book so interesting is that most of the poems were either written or edited by a physician:  Andrew Duncan the elder (1744-1828).

Duncan was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, a period which came to an end at the close of the 18th century. But he is still well known today, as the founder of two Edinburgh institutions: a dispensary for the sick poor, and a lunatic asylum where patients were treated humanely.  

Not only did Andrew Duncan write poetry, but he composed much of it in Scots! Here is the title page of the collection:

I am fascinated by the Scottish Enlightenment figures. Like David Hume, who you can read about in the previous blog, Andrew Duncan had multiple talents, and this is true for most other eminent representatives of that period. Adam Ferguson was an army chaplain and sociologist, the economist Adam Smith wrote his first book on moral sentiments, the painter Allan Ramsay of Kinkell published a book on government, the poet James MacPherson wrote a history of Great Britain, and Thomas Telford published poetry before he became famous as a civil engineer. And there are more examples like this!

Like the other Enlightenment figures, Andrew Duncan was a convivial man with great energy, and founded many clubs and societies, such as the Aesculapian Club, the Harvein, Gymnastic and Royal Caledonian Horticultural societies. His poetry, admittedly of indifferent quality, was often read out or sung at meetings of these clubs. The atmosphere in the taverns where they met must have been amazing!

You can get a great insight into the figures and achievements of the Scottish Enlightenment from our Learning Zone feature “Northern Lights“. It is particularly designed as a resource for secondary schools, but there is something in it for everybody: town planning, Ossian, Scotticisms, clubs and societies like those founded by Andrew Duncan, and the Statistical Account of Scotland.

Further reading:

Andrew Duncan the elder in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

David Hume in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

Adam Ferguson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

Adam Smith in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

Allan Ramsay in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

James MacPherson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

Thomas Telford in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections)

Earlier this year we bought a 12-page pamphlet containing the poem ‘A dramatic dialogue between the King of France and the Pretender’ (Shelfmark: RB.m.701). The work was printed in London in 1746. Interestingly, it is not recorded in David F. Foxon’s ‘English verse, 1701-1750 a catalogue of separately printed poems with notes on contemporary collected editions’ (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

Title page

The poem is an imaginative recreation of a conversation between between Louis XV and Charles Edward Stuart, known as the Young Pretender, following events at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746. It is signed only ‘By a young gentleman of Oxford’. The poem is composed in blank, or unrhymed, verse.

While the King refers to the Duke of Cumberland as ‘that beardless, unexperienc’d Boy’, the Pretender recounts the abilities of the Duke in battle:

‘But, soon as e’er the sad and dreadful Name
Of Cumberland was whisper’d through the Lines,
Each Face grew pale, a sudden Panick seiz’d
Each Scottish Heart, as if some mighty Power
With him had join’d, to disappoint our Hopes.’

The Pretender goes on to relate his troops’ valiant attempts before they ‘fell a victim to their dreadful Duke’, and Charles himself was forced ‘reluctant, from the bloody Field’.

What makes our acquisition even more important is that this is the only recorded copy. This new addition supplements the Library’s rich holdings of printed material relating to Jacobites and Jacobitism.

Further reading:

• Charles Edward Stuart in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS licensed digital collections)

Today is National Poetry Day, and what better way to celebrate than with a sonnet?

The popular image of the Calvinism of the Scottish Reformation is that it was a dour religion with no time for art. So you may be surprised to hear that this sonnet can be found in nothing less than the Church of Scotland’s official prayer book – the Book of Common Order.

The Book of Common Order, or Knox’s Liturgy, was written by Knox for the English Congregation at Frankfurt in Germany; he had derived much of it from Calvin, who approved it. When a number of families left Frankfurt for Geneva in 1555 after a quarrel, they adopted it as their prayer book too. It was published in Geneva in 1556.
The Scots also adopted this order of service for their new Presbyterian kirk, and Robert Lekpreuik published several editions in Edinburgh in the 1560s. The edition we are showing in our display was published in 1565 with a new title page, additional prayers and the metrical psalms, complete with tunes: The forme of prayers and ministration of the sacraments &c. vsed in the English Church at Geneua, approued & receiued by the churche of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1565. (Edinburgh: Robert Lekpreuik, 1565, H.29.d.5c)

The last thing I was expecting to find when I opened this book was a sonnet – and one dedicated to the Church of Scotland itself. It was written by William Stewart, Ross Herald.

Thou Litle Church, To Whom Christ Hath Restorde
The Cleare Lost Light Of His Evangel Pure :
Thy God Doth With All Diligence Procure
That With His Worde, Thou Maist Be Stil Decorde.

Thogh Thou Have Long His Wholesome Trueth Abhorde,
Yet His Great Mercies Did Thy Blindnes Cure,
Submitting Thee Unto The Careful Cure
Of Suche Pastours, As Truely Teache His Worde.

Out Of Whose Hands, (with Great Thanks,) Now Receive
All David’s Psalmes Set Foorth In Pleasant Verse :
A Greater Gift Of Them Thou Couldst Not Crave,
Whose Endles Frute My Pen Can Not Rehearse :
For Here Thou Hast, For Everie Accident
That May Occurre, A Doctrine Pertinent.

The author of this sonnet went in a few short years from being a champion of the religious establishment to quite the opposite, if the account of his death is to be believed: he was burned at St Andrews in 1569 for ’sorcery and necromancy’.

You can find more modern Scottish poetry for National Poetry Day in this special web feature on the NLS website – and see also our Modern Scottish Collections blog

Music was one of the most valued tools of the early Reformers across Europe. Reformers from Luther to Coverdale insisted on the importance of singing psalms and other religious songs. Their vision was of everyone from ploughboy to housewife singing simple vernacular Scriptural songs as they went about their daily lives, in contrast both to the idea of church music consisting of polyphonic Latin texts sung by a choir, and to the popular songs of the day which they thought saw as immoral and rude.

In Scotland, this idea found expression in the book commonly known as the ‘Gude and Godly Ballatis’ (although the contemporary editions are titled Ane Compendious Booke, of Godly and Spirituall Songs), which begins with a preface hoping that these ‘spirituall sangs’ will replace ‘bawdrie and unclein sangs’, ‘specially amang yong persons’. Inside is a collection of metrical psalms, translations of Lutheran hymns, and ‘spiritual songs’ which are sung to the tunes of popular secular songs, or parody their lyrics. Love songs, for instance, are turned into songs where the ‘lover’ becomes Christ. There are also songs which reflect the turbulent times of the 1540s and 1550s, when the Protestants felt threatened by the Catholic authorities, and asserted their own independence from the Pope.

Downe be yone River I ran,
Downe be yone River I ran,
Thinkand on Christ sa fre,
That brocht me to libertie,
And I ane sinful man.

Quha suld be my lufe bot he,
That hes onlie savit me,
And be his deith me wan:
On the Croce sa cruellie,
He sched his blude aboundantlie,
And all for the lufe of man.

It is an important and popular book, everyone agrees, but one which has a somewhat mysterious story. Who compiled it, and when? And when was it first printed?

Continue reading Good and Godly Ballads